To-day he had broken through this last custom, but observed the others.  After an abbreviated Morning Service he lit a cheroot, climbed into his dog-cart, and drove off towards Meriton at a brisk pace, being due to perform his errand there and report himself at Meriton by three in the afternoon.  For luncheon he carried a box of sandwiches and a flask of whisky and water.  His horse—­a tall, free-stepping bay, by name Archdeacon—­was, properly speaking, a hunter, and the Parson, in driving as in riding him, just rattled him along, letting him feel the rein but seldom, or never using it to interfere with his pace.

The entrance gates at Meriton are ancient and extremely handsome, wrought of the old iron of East Sussex, and fashioned, somewhere in the mid-eighteenth century, after an elaborate Florentine pattern—­tradition says, by smiths imported from Italy.  The pillars are of weather-stained marble, and four in number, the two major ones surrounded by antlered stags, the two minor by cressets of carved flame, symbolising the human soul, and the whole illustrating the singular motto of the Chandons, “As the hart desireth.” On either side of the gates is a lodge in the Ionic style, with a pillared portico, and the lodges are shadowed by two immense cedars, the marvel of the country-side.

But to-day the lodges stood empty, with closed doors and drawn blinds—­ the doors weather-stained, the blinds dingy with dust.  Weeds overgrew the bases of the pillars, and grass had encroached upon all but a narrow ribbon scored by wheel-ruts along the noble drive.  Parson Chichester pulled up, and was about to dismount and open the gates for himself, when he caught sight of a stranger coming afoot down the drive; and the stranger, at the same moment catching sight of the dog-cart, waved a hand and mended his pace to do this small service.

“Much obliged to you,” nodded Parson Chichester pleasantly, after a sharp and curious scrutiny.  For the stranger was a parson too by his dress—­a tall, elderly man with grey side-whiskers and a hard, square mouth like the slit of a letter-box.  The clergy are always curious about one another by a sort of freemasonry, and Parson Chichester knew every beneficed clergyman in the diocese and most of the unbeneficed.  But who could this be?  And what might be his business at Meriton, of all places?

The stranger acknowledged his thanks with a slight wave of the hand.

“A fine day.  I am happy to have been of service.”

It was curious.  Each paused for a second or so as if on the point of asking a question; each waited for the other to speak; then, as nothing came of it, each bowed again, and thus awkwardly they parted.

Parson Chichester drove on with a pucker between the eyebrows and a humorous twitch in the corners of his mouth.  So when two pedestrians, strangers, meet and politely attempt to draw aside but with misdirected chasses that leave them still confronting one another, they disengage at length and go their ways between irritation and amusement.